Jon's "Life After School"

The Passion of the Christ

It isn't about what you may think it's about.

There was no line at the theatre, and when I walked in, I appeared to be the only patron in the entire place. I went to the auditorium where the film was playing and no one else was in there. There was no light music playing from the speakers, no Coca-cola trivia flashing at me from the screen. Just dead silence. I chose the best seat in the house.

Several minutes later, the music came on and the advertisement and trivia slides started showing, but people would only enter the auditorium intermittently, and the seats didn't really begin to fill until 10 minutes before the show started, and even then, they weren't that full. This was fine with me. I really preferred to see this film with a true film-going audience, not a group of "Jesus-movie" zealots who were going to raise their hands and prayerfully cry out "Amen" every 30 seconds.

I exaggerate, of course, but I think you understand my meaning. This is a cinematic event, not a big-tent revival. Not that I deny the spiritual aspect of the entire filmmaking and distribution process (see my Feb. 20 post), but I'm just not with the whole "Christian movie" exclusivism. The film was produced for everyone, and I feel that some Christians are more excited about the fact that Mel Gibson made a Jesus movie, that it's "rated R," that it's supposedly the most realistic and powerful portrayal of Christ ever, than about simply going and seeing it for themselves to judge.

By now there are dozens upon dozens of reviews for the film, some good, some bad. On the one hand, there are notable commentators such as Roger Ebert, Peter Travers, and Richard Corliss, who praise the film; on the other, you have A.O. Scott, David Ansen (whom I highly respect), and the always-wrong, always-childish Glenn Lovell, all of whom don't particularly like the movie at all.

The naysayers have several arguments. The most loud (and most stupid) of them is the anti-Semitism charge, the path which critics such as Mr. Lovell have taken. But first, they start with minor criticisms on "context" and "violence" before they begin grating to the political matters. Every review I've read so far that brings the issue of anti-Semitism ALWAYS, without exception, continues on to degenerate into an attack, not on the film itself, but on the Gospels. If you want to accuse the film of being anti-Semitic, OK, that's fine by me as long as you have your reasons, but if you start bashing the legitimacy of the Gospels, some of the most scientifically and historically validated documents in the world, well that's the kind of shit that I'm not just about to take from anyone. Go back to school and get a real degree, you hacks.

Another case against the film is that it's just too bloody and violent to incite any kind of impact other than recoil and disgust. This is a somewhat valid point, as the movie is quite often difficult to watch and I found myself wincing at every sound of the flail's crack and each pounding of the nails. Even so, I didn't find it to be overly graphic or unecessary in the least. The film portrayed exactly what needed to be portrayed, and the sequences of torture and gore hardly dragged on as some reviewers claim. Mel Gibson actually smoothed things over, in my opinion, with artistry in cinematography and editing; had you actually been in the place of Jesus, I guarantee you, those lashings and beatings would have seemed a LOT more dragged out than they appear in the film.

Yet another case states that the film lacks the proper context of Jesus' life. This is, in some ways, understandable, because the movie does indeed only give the final hours of the life of Christ, and not much attention is given to the rest of his ministry except for a few, very brief (and brilliantly integrated) flashbacks. All the characters, including Jesus, are barely developed at all, and any intelligible (and subtitled) lines of significance are few and far between. However, this brings me to what I'm really trying to say about the movie.

It isn't about Jesus.

When people say that there's too much blood that it distracts from the message, or that we don't really see enough of Jesus' ministry to be affected by his death, or so on and so on, they're missing the point entirely. The movie isn't about Jesus, it's not about Gibson or his "mission"-like undertaking, or the controversy and politics; it's not about the blood, the realism; it's not even about evangelistic opportunities or lives being changed. As I watched the movie, it wasn't about any of those things.

It was about me.

I cried. I cried hard. But it wasn't only because of the suffering depicted onscreen; I started sobbing long before the trial took place. It was because Peter disowned Christ, and the moment I saw Jesus look up at him while being beaten, I saw that he was looking straight at me. When the adulteress woman reached out to his feet and he lifted her up from the ground, it was me. When he carried that cross up the hill as the soldiers spit on him, whipped him, mocked him, it was all about me. And even when they had driven the stakes into his hands, he was able to look at the very ones who had crucified him and say, "Father, forgive them," I saw that it was all about me. In the garden, as he prayed for the Father to somehow spare him the excruciating torment of the hours to come, and realizing that the Father would be forced to turn his ear, it was because of me. When he cried out "Why have you forsaken me?" it was me.

And I think that this is where, while some reviewers have failed to grasp the concept, others such as Roger Ebert and Jeff Huston have understood (which you can verify for yourself by reading their reviews). Regardless of their beliefs (it goes without saying that the huge majority of people in the business are non-Christian), whether or not Jesus actually saves us from sins and grants us eternal life, whether or not God even exists at all, it is indisputable that Jesus suffered and died for for all people, past, present, and future generations, with a sacrificial love and a passion that I think has yet to be fully comprehended by man. Character development, pacing, background, contextual information, and establishing scenes become completely irrelevant. Those aren't what the film intended to convey. Beyond the Gospels, the life, testimony, and death of Christ, through all the prophecies and even since the beginning of creation, there has been something basic about it all. And this is what makes The Passion of the Christ so powerful. Sitting there in the theatre, no one spoke, no one laughed, no one even moved or fidgeted, or even turned away during the most horrendous moments. It was because, for each moment during the movie, with every word and every image, I was forced to narrow the scope of the film until its true message was shown: it was all for me.

Posted by jnyip at February 25, 2004 03:52 PM